AgResearch cuts include greenhouse gas research – of course

29 comments on “AgResearch cuts include greenhouse gas research – of course ”

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1. Capn Insano 1

   25 September 2015 at 12:34 pm

   Nats have got their heads so far into the sand they can find oil themselves.
   • Tricledrown 1.1

     25 September 2015 at 12:51 pm

     National are a bunch of pigheaded f/wits .
     Fonterra cutting back on research ,
     National destroyed the woolresearch in 2009/10 .
     Cut agricultural research funding in 2010.
     Now they are at it again.
     The damage to our research is irepairable.
     Once the scientists have taken redundancy and either left the industry or have been picked up by overseas countries their knowledge and input is lost forever.
     Stephen Joyce is an economic terrorist.
     Farmers all over the country are really pissed off at this bean brained bean counter.
     Continuity is one of the most important driving factors in doing valuable research.
     Short term cost cutting by an business minded idiot damages any chances of making long term gains.
     Joyce and National are consigning the whole agricultural sector to be a commodity price taker rather than maker.
     So blinglish can balance the books.
     • tc 1.1.1

       25 September 2015 at 1:40 pm

       Blinglish will never balance the books that’s just anothet fib they run with as a cover for all the ideological slash n burn, they’ve done nothing to stimulate the economy and his last budget was loaded with dodgy accounting like treatment of expenditure as loans so it looks like you’ve created an asset.

       This govt is focused on a transfer of wealth from public to private and hobbling areas that provide knowledge (education/R&D/night classes etc ) and social justice such as relationships aeoteora, helath underfunded now by 25%, caregivers and underpaid welfare recipients denied justice etc.

       Whoever coined the term haters and wreckers was sadly very close to the mark.
   • Bill 1.2

     25 September 2015 at 2:33 pm

     “Nats have got their heads so far into the sand they can find oil themselves.”

     Bet if they got a ‘strike!’ they’d still just spout shit though…
2. Bill 2

   25 September 2015 at 12:38 pm

   Given that their whole 11% below 90 or 04 by (erm – I forget) was predicated on buying carbon credits, it makes absolute sense in a “The ship’s going down. Quick! Grab the silver!!” sort of a way.

   I thought they were doing some fairly loud trumpet blowing around the animal and farm tech side of emissions though. Guess I must’ve misheard 😉
3. Sabine 3

   25 September 2015 at 12:42 pm

   Well if you pretend its not there just long enough one ends up believing their lies rather then their own eyes.

   What else is new.
4. Chooky 4

   25 September 2015 at 12:45 pm

   yup …and the Green Party have given a helping hand to jonkey nact who has cut the jobs of these scientists…sick making
   • Enough is Enough 4.1

     25 September 2015 at 2:32 pm

     WTF

     How have the Greens assisted in that?
   • savenz 4.2

     25 September 2015 at 9:17 pm

     +100 agree with all of you above in particular Tricledrown & TC
5. Bill 5

   25 September 2015 at 12:50 pm

   Mr Joyce.

   And AgResearch has seen significant change in its areas of research that people value, and what I mean by people I mean the sector that pays for their research.

   That’s so, I dunno – disjointed and detached from life and humanity that puking might be the only expression I’m capable of.

   Meanwhile, in the happily dehumanised world of market forces and shareholders- ‘my sector’ can maximise profit in the short to medium term that ‘my sector’ is expected to remain viable before the unholy hell of climate change hits – hmm, grabbing the silver’s such fun.
6. heather 6

   25 September 2015 at 1:10 pm

   Each day we ask each other – what next? it can’t get any worse, but the next day, that is what happens. The idea we do not need science for Green House Gases and Climate Change is farcial. Where is the thinking behind that?
   Farcial like this Government.
   I wonder how the Greens are going to deal with this, their new friends have smacked them good and properly.
   The scientists at Ag Research have been doing world class work for many years, people come from around the world to work there. Once more NZ will be seen as an embarrassment on the world stage, sacking climate change scientists!!!
7. Draco T Bastard 7

   25 September 2015 at 2:04 pm

   why would any young person choose science as a career?

   So they can get the hell out of a failing NZ.

   The Nats literally don’t want to know about greenhouse gases (the same way they canned environmental monitoring). This is madness.

   The Nats will cancel any and all research that proves them wrong or threatens to cut into their profits by forcing them to change their ways. In other words, they’ll cut all research.
   • Enough is Enough 7.1

     25 September 2015 at 2:31 pm

     I’m just a little curious as to where in this world is better than this failing New Zealand?
     • tc 7.1.1

       25 September 2015 at 3:39 pm

       Across the ditch as the msm still has some independance so they get their PR/spin deconstructed especially when they contradict themselves or backtrack and wuperts influence gets outed every time.

       It has issues but infrastructure, education and health are fairly solid still with Adeliade a gem of a city IMO.

       Can’t see my kids ever returning particularly after 3 terms of the hollowmen against what was a thin capital base already as one of their work areas has been all but wiped out by nact.
     • Draco T Bastard 7.1.2

       25 September 2015 at 3:51 pm

       Amazingly enough there are countries out there that do massive amounts of research that are happy to employ scientists. Of course, even they’re starting to have a massive over supply of scientists compared to the amount of research being done as productivity continues to climb.
8. Chooky 8

   25 September 2015 at 2:18 pm

   Labour and NZF should be playing this for all they can…they should be taking up the Climate Change /Environment issue and running it as their own

   …in this day and age ANY political party that makes green environmental, climate change issues a major platform will win votes …

   they need to have politically talented and academically able major spokespeople on these issues
   • Enough is Enough 8.1

     25 September 2015 at 2:30 pm

     Labour already does to a degree.

     The Greens most certainly do.
9. Smilin 9

   25 September 2015 at 2:22 pm

   Joyce the other day gleefully trying not to use the words corporates involved in the sellout of agresearch with a word that escapes me for the present would about level 9 which he used every time he came close to naming the interest involved
   The scientist explaining the situation on the radio the other day made the point that many of the scientist who have lost their jobs in the past are still here in NZ working in universities and have not gone in bulk to corporations which leds me to think the right wing agenda to break power groups is the strategy to ensure the corporats like Monsanto get into our agresearch to continue introducing GE by stealth but I cant prove it so it remains a supposition.
   I might add that Nationalcorp are all about the sharemarket so agresearch is just another one to move to privatise
   • Rosemary McDonald 9.1

     25 September 2015 at 6:24 pm

     “I might add that Nationalcorp are all about the sharemarket so agresearch is just another one to move to privatise”

     Yep…and those ‘investing’ in agricultural research will be the agrichemical peddlers, the fertiliser manufacturers, the GM fanatics….the ‘we’re feeding a starving world’ brigade.

     Result…environmental disaster, shittier human health outcomes, and short term profits.

     despair
10. Ad 10

    25 September 2015 at 2:45 pm

    +1000 Rob.

    Total travesty of dedicated bright people.
11. weston 11

    25 September 2015 at 7:12 pm

    someone ran the forrestry research through the shreader a while back also not sure if that was national or labour but anyway once upon a time our country actively experimented with all sorts of timber trees a great many of which grow really well here . Not any more the only research being done on forrestry now is on cloneing pine trees and yet more bloody pine trees and dont forget the nats very sneakily including the bit of extra legislation for the provision of ge pine trees into the health and safety bill at the elleventh hour the other day.we dont have an actual forrestry here we have monoculture
12. Robert Atack 12

    25 September 2015 at 7:36 pm

    We don’t really need scientist anymore, they have kind of done their job.
    They have explained that the last time the environment was @ 400ppm CO2, there were no mammals left alive.
    In previous extinction events most extinctions had happened by the time the atmosphere hit 400 ppm, {apart from the Emeian (?)
    Some disasters ie volcano/asteroid caused runaway climate change, and even then it was 10,000 times (?) slower than now – to get to 400 ppm. But also by that time most of any ice trapped methane would have gone. This time we are at the dawn of the biggest cluster fuck the planet has ever seen, sadly we are going to miss the real fun bits ? = 30 mt waves etc
    So thanks guys, if you could maybe look into a survivable human habitat in a 4 to 6C + warmer world, with a massive radioactive atmosphere, that might be interesting, otherwise scientists are redundant.
    Humans can not remove CO2, (except in buried cadavers maybe?), @ 400ppm it is past the point of ‘reduce emissioning’ our selves out of this mess, those days went after about 280ppm to 320ppm. There is no point in sending stupid apes down to the Antarctic to measure how fast the ice is melting, it is just academic now, anyone with half a brain knows we are so fucked, the proverbial bullet has well and truly left the barrel, and is heading at us at geological light speed.
    Thanks to the scientist, we know we are in run away abrupt climate change, we know there are up to 200 species going extinct each day (I have trouble getting my head around that one).
    It doesn’t matter how much more we know, the masses will not listen until the water stops coming out of the tap, most of the computer literate societies, chose to ignore the facts, no matter how many scientists say them.
    The fing facts NOW are scary NOW, we don’t need to waste time, money, and effort discovering more shit for the useless leaders to ignore, or ‘get another opinion’ of.
    How deep in the shit do you want to know you are, I would think a foot over your head would be enough?
    The information is free FFS??
    http://guymcpherson.com/2014/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/
    • b waghorn 12.1

      25 September 2015 at 7:43 pm

      If you truly believe we are as screwed as you appear too, why not sell up and live for today until its over?
      • Robert Atack 12.1.1

        25 September 2015 at 8:30 pm

        What makes you think I don’t live like that?
        I’m not investing in my retirement that is for sure.
        Oh and I made sure I couldn’t have children, not for the planets sake or even theirs, more for how I think I would feel seeing them die.
        • b waghorn 12.1.1.1

          25 September 2015 at 8:53 pm

          Fair enough ,
    • Robert Atack 12.2

      25 September 2015 at 8:55 pm

      We don’t need to fund Dr Natalia Shakhova to go looking around the Tundra for more methane vents, she has already said we face a 50 gigaton burp of CH4 ‘any day now’
      If the planet was in the slightest bit interested this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQDVr1eMLK8 would have more than 5,000 views
      Or Professor Peter Wadhams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xdOTyGQOso
      “We have to take it out of the atmosphere, reducing will do nothing”
      Enough has been said about how dire the situation is, but something like 99.4% of the population just don’t hear it.
      And in reality that is fine, as there is nothing to be done about it, EXCEPT maybe not adding to the problem via the maternity wards.
      • Pat 12.2.1

        25 September 2015 at 9:44 pm

        may explain the hedonistic tendencies of the neolibs
13. RedLogix 13

    25 September 2015 at 10:29 pm

    Back to AgResearch.

    Another good Herald article. (Two in one day … is the tea lady putting something in the editors cuppa?)

    To be blunt, we are fast approaching the stage where, if AgResearch were to disappear from the face of the earth, there would hardly be a ripple in New Zealand agriculture.

    This is a tragedy, and the only solution is to disband AgResearch as we know it, and reinvent it as a science led organisation.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11518965

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1. Commentary on research cuts « The Standard: posted on 29 September 2015 at 2:58 pm

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